Hi.

Sep 20 If you give a Ninja a purse...

I'm having a hard time figuring out how to introduce violence into my child's life. I don't mean it like that. It's just that I:

1. Don't want j to play at murdering people with toy guns;

2. Don't want her to play at beating and murdering people in violent video games; and

3. I don't want her to think of violence in TV shows/movies as entertainment.

My parents' approach was very straightforward: murder is awful, so it's not funny to make light of that by pretending to kill other people. As far as I can tell, my sister is having no problem raising her own kids with this same philosophy. You should hear her go off on the recent glorification of the pirate ('Why are people dressing their kids up as murdering, thieving rapists for Halloween? Pirates are cool now? Tell that to the fishermen of Somalia!')

My issue is, I believe all that too, I really do. But...

1. I love games where you actually shoot someone with something: laser tag and paintball;

3. There is something about ninjas that seems really cool to me, even if they were basically spies that assassinated people for money. Samurais, probably better people with their sense of honor and strict code of conduct, but somehow not as cool to me (or anyone else - I've never seen a samurai on Halloween). I like the guys with the masks and the swords and the pretty stars that they throw so gracefully (I know, into peoples' foreheads).

How am I supposed to handle this as a parent? Luckily, I don't have to figure it out yet (although I'm very open to suggestions... and justifications). I hesitated, but did not resist buying this fabric a while ago. I mean, I was just going to stick it in my stash. Why does that have to be a big ethical dilemma?

for my friend, but had nothing for her 7 year-old daughter. Somehow I don't remember 7 being an age when I was really into pretty napkins. Can you see where I'm going?

We haven't spent a lot of time together in the last few years, so all I knew about her I'd learned from her mom on Facebook. And that amounted to: she just went to Disneyland and she likes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

, which was a quick 50 minute project, including picking fabric and ironing!

I figured, when she's feeling a little Disney, she can use it this way:

And for her ninja days,

Girl after my own heart, once I gave the purse to her I never saw the polka dots again. What does she carry in it? A book called Unlikely Friendships about different animal species who have sweet friendships with each other, of course.

For a minute I felt weird about bringing the ninja thing into someone else's house - it's like giving a girl her first Barbie and wondering if you aren't giving her a first shove towards anorexia... but then I saw her wooden ninja sword (that she's not allowed to touch people with, otherwise it will get thrown away). I've got no answers, I'm not sure her mom does either. But I have a feeling ninjas are going to make their way into my house soon enough, and I've got at least half a yard of that fabric.